Electronic board system

ABSTRACT

An electronic board system includes an electronic board having a screen for displaying information of interest to a work group or community, an input device for receiving information from users in a group or community to be displayed on the electronic board, a memory for storing information received from the input device and a processor for selecting which information stored in the memory to display on the screen, where and how to display the selected information on the screen and displaying the selected information on the screen. The processor selects which information to display in accordance with a predetermined relationship based on a group-based recommendation criteria and user interest. A plurality of sensors disposed behind the screen detect user interest in information displayed on the screen near the sensor. User interest may also be determined by monitoring user requests for copies of information displayed on the screen.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

[0001] This application is related to copending, coassigned U.S. patentapplication, Grasso et al., “Recommender System and Method forGenerating Implicit Ratings,” docket number D/A0034 filed the same dayas this application and to copending, coassigned US patent application,Grasso et al., “Knowledge Management System and Method,” docket numberD/99457 filed the same day as this application.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

[0002] This invention relates to electronic board systems and inparticular to an electronic board system employing a recommender system.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

[0003] Notice boards and bulletin boards provide a common location forgroups of people and communities to post information about activities ofinterest to the group. They are usually located in a common area such asa print/copy room or lunch room. Some boards have rules governing thetypes of messages to post, but in general there are no formalities andany member of the group or community can post a message or notice. Theconcept is so popular, virtual bulletin boards also appear on theInternet.

[0004] Various types of writing boards are frequently used in meetingsto enable the participants to take notes and display them to the group.Since a copy of the information recorded on the writing surface of theboard is often desired, some boards will print a copy of the images onthe board. Other boards will generate an electronic version of theinformation written on the screen. U.S. Patent No. 5,455,906 to Usuda,Electronic Board System, describes an electronic board system having adisplay screen, a display unit, data processor and data storage. Theelectronic board system enables users to input data to be displayed onthe screen by: writing with a pointing device directly on the screen,providing manually written or graphics data to an image reader whichscans the data and provides it to the data processor, inputting data viaa writing tablet connected to the data processor, and inputting dataorally through a microphone connected to voice recognition software.

[0005] In any medium to large organization there will be a number ofactivities occurring concurrently with varying subsets of theorganization's members involved. It can become very difficult forindividuals to keep track of all the activities in which they might beinterested but do not have a direct involvement. Solutions exist inwhich reports and shared calendars are used to address this but suchsolutions require additional overhead to keep up to date, and must oftenbe actively looked for. The challenge is to provide a solution thatprovides awareness of the activities occurring in a workplace in aninformal way without requiring additional work by its users.

[0006] Large screen user interfaces have been around for many years,having being pioneered in the 1970's by Myron Kreuger (Myron W. Krueger,“Artificial Reality III”, Addison-Wesley, 1991). Much recent work hasfocussed on the use of large screens for collaboration either betweenco-located or distributed users and using both 2D and 3D interfaces. Inthese cases the central concepts are to provide an interface which canbe used simultaneously by more than one person and to provide a largeworking area that can fill the field of view without having to resort to“exotic” hardware such as head-mounted displays (HMDs) of the kind usedfor immersive virtual reality.

[0007] An example of usage of large-screens to support collaboration isthe DynaWall (see Strietz, N, A, Geissler, J., & Holmer, T. “Roomwarefor Cooperative Buildings: Integrated Design of Architectural Spaces andInformation Spaces” in N. Streitz, S. Konomi, H. Burkhardt (Eds.),Cooperative Buildings-Integrating Information, Organization, andArchitecture. Proceedings of CoBuild98, Darmstadt, Germany. LectureNotes in Computer Science, Vol. 1370. Springer: Heidelberg, 1998, pp.4-21 and J. Geissler. “Shuffle, throw or take it! Working efficientlywith an interactive wall”, CHI′98 summary, pp. 265-266). DynaWall,developed at GMD, is a large screen display with an active area of4.5×1.1 meters and a resolution of 3072×768 pixels. The DynaWall isformed by three networked, back-projected electronic whiteboards eachwith its own controlling personal computer. User interaction is byhand-gesture and pen input. The implementers have developed a number ofinteraction techniques for manipulating objects on the display. Theintent of the device is to support collaborative working, apparentlyusing applications similar to those found on standard 2D GUIs.

[0008] Let's Browse (Henry Lieberman, Neil Van Dyke, and AdrianaVivacqua, “Let's Browse: A Collaborative Web Browsing Agent”, inInternational Conference on Intelligent User Interfaces, Los Angeles,USA, January 1999) is described as an experiment in building an agent toassist a group of people in browsing by suggesting new material likelyto be of common interest. It was built as an extension to a Web browsingagent called Letizia. Letizia performs a real-time, incremental breadthfirst search around the user's current page, and filters candidate pagesthrough profiles learned from observing the user's browsing activity.Users wear active badges which enable Lets Browse to detect theirpresence, to identify them and to have access to their profiles. Oneside of the display shows the currently recommended page and the otherside shows the users (and extracts of their profiles) for whom thecurrent page is being recommended. In the current implementation thereis no direct user input; instead the system operates in a “channelsurfing” mode in which pages are displayed as the system finds pageswhich have a good match with the profiles of the users currentlystanding in front of the display.

[0009] Silhouettell (Masayuki Okamoto, Hideyuki Nakanishi, ToshikazuNishimura, Toru Ishida, “Silhouettell: Awareness support for real-worldencounter”, in Community Computing and Support Systems, Toru Ishida ed.,Springer-Verlag, 1998, pp. 317-330) includes a large screen display thatdisplays silhouettes of the users currently standing in front of it. Itthen displays common topics of interest and draws lines between usersand topics in order to show the interests that the users have in common.A simple video based user recognition method is used which recognizesusers based on the color of their clothing.

[0010] Examples of other less recent projects focusing on constructingportals to 3D include the Alive project (P. Maes, T. Darrell, B.Blumberg, and A. Pentland, “The ALIVE System: Wireless, Full-BodyInteraction with Autonomous Agents”, ACM Multimedia Systems, specialIssue on Multimedia and Multisensory Virtual Worlds, Spring 1996) andthe CAVEs projects implementing an idea from Carolina Cruz-Neira, DanielJ. Sandin, Thomas A. DeFanti, Robert V. Kenyon and John C. Hart (“TheCave-Audio Visual Experience Automatic Virtual Environment”,Communications of the ACM, 35(6), June 1992, pp. 65-72).

[0011] In the Newspaper project at the Apple Advanced Technology Group,Lab members can send an email (using any email software) to an addressdedicated to the Newspaper. An article with the subject of their emailas the headline and the text of as the body is displayed on the frontpage of the Newspaper. A small picture of the sender, and an iconrepresenting the sender's project appear next to the article. Users canview the article from a web browser on their desktop or portablecomputer or by simply walking through the lounge area to look at theprojected display. (See Stephanie Houde, Rachel Bellamy, and LaureenLeahy. “In Search of Design Principles for tools and Practices toSupport Communication within a Learning Community”, SIGCHI′98, Vol. 30,No. 2.)

[0012] Despite the above-mentioned usage of large screens, there is aneed to leverage the similarities between large-screens and physicalnotice boards. In particular there is a need to use a large-screen widedisplay area as a dynamic publishing medium for a community of people.

SUMMARY OF TIE INVENTION

[0013] An electronic board system, according to the invention, includesan electronic board having a screen for displaying information. Aplurality of sensors disposed behind or around the screen may be used todetect user interest in information displayed on the screen near thesensor. An input device receives information from users in a group orcommunity to be displayed on the electronic board. Various types ofinput devices can be used including, for example, a multi-functiondevice (MFD), a scanner, a writing board for receiving handwritteninformation, a personal digital assistant (PDA), an audio input devicefor receiving voice information or a personal computer or workstation.In some cases, the display screen may operate as an input device, inwhich case users may input handwritten information or point toinformation. Users can also use the input device as an output device torequest information displayed on the screen. This information can beprinted out on the MFD or emailed to the user or sent to the user insome other convenient manner. A memory stores information received fromthe input device. The memory can be located locally or externally, suchas when the electronic board is integrated into a network or connectedto a network or the Internet. A processor selects which informationstored in the memory (or other data storage facilities of interest tothe group or community) to display on the screen, determines where andhow to display the selected information on the screen and displays theselected information on the screen. The processor selects whichinformation to display in accordance with a predetermined relationship(or set of rules) based on a group-based recommendation criteria anduser interest detected by the plurality of sensors.

[0014] The electronic board system promotes awareness of ongoingactivity and other matters of interest in the workplace or community. Acommunity may be any group of users having a common interest, includingfor example, a group of shoppers in a shopping mall or store, a group ofgamers in a video or game arcade, a group of shoppers in a specialtystore such as a music or video store. The electronic board systemsprovides informal interaction and general information about theactivities of the members of the workplace or community in anon-intrusive way. The electronic board system offers similar featuresto standard notice boards in that it can be used as a focus for socialactivities and anyone can post a notice without any formal approvalprocess. However the electronic board system offers several features andadvantages not found or easily provided by physical notice boards.

[0015] The electronic board system is dynamic. User comments may beupdated continually so that old or less relevant comments are graduallyremoved and replaced by more current information. Users can watch thedisplay screen and get an understanding of what is happening now andwhat has happened in the recent past. The electronic board system mayalso display data that is inherently dynamic such as information fromPointcast or live video or audio feeds. For example, the electronicboard system could be configured to display video windows fed fromcameras of other locations in the organization (other common areas,people's offices) or video from external sources such as news channels.For a community of music or video store customers, the electronic boardsystem may display, for example, music or video clips from items mostrecently purchased.

[0016] The electronic board system is reactive. The electronic boardsystem senses the areas that users are currently interested in anddevotes more display space to those areas at the expense of areas inwhich there is less interest. The electronic board system does thisusing one or a combination of techniques. First, it can use sensorslocated in or around the electronic board to passively detect whichparts of the surface people are currently standing in front of and gaugeapproximately the relative sizes of each group of people. If the displayscreen is touch sensitive or a touch selective input device is used, theelectronic board system can use the items which people directly selectto display. The electronic board system can also monitor all the itemswhich users have requested output copies by all output devices.

[0017] The electronic board system can be integrated with existinginformation systems and local area networks or the Internet. Users canpost items to the electronic board system by, for example, using macrosembedded in office applications (such as Microsoft Word and Excel) or bysending the electronic board system an email address. Users can postinformation to the electronic board system from their desktop machinesor workstations. Additionally, the electronic board system can displaymore traditional information such as group calendars and lists offorthcoming events. Multiple electronic board displays at differentlocations can be networked together, each with its own set of rulescustomized to the particular community or portion of the community atthat location.

[0018] The electronic board system combines a dynamic display surfacewith a variety of input devices (such as a multi-function device, PDAs,etc.) and provides a powerful mechanism for displaying and sharinginformation important to an organization or community while providing auser-interface that everyone is already familiar with, the officenotice-board. The electronic board system integrates concepts ofscreen-based information systems and paper-based interaction to providethe advantages of both in a novel way. The electronic board system usesa group-based recommender system, which displays items and topics ofinterest to the most members of the work group or community. If a sharedcalendar is also provided (i.e., a calendar which tells the electronicboard system which users are present in the area and at what times), therecommended items displayed are chosen according to which members of agroup are currently present in the office to see the recommendations.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

[0019]FIG. 1 is block diagram of an electronic board system according tothe invention;

[0020]FIG. 2 is a block diagram of the architecture of the electronicboard system of FIG. 1; and

[0021]FIG. 3 is a block diagram of the display processing and controlfeatures of the electronic board system of FIG. 1.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS

[0022] Referring to the figures and in particular to FIGS. 1 and 2, anelectronic board system according to the invention is shown and referredto by reference numeral 100. System 100 includes a large screen display10 on which items of information of interest to a workgroup or communityof users 50 is displayed. Display 10 may be any conventional largescreen display. In this embodiment, display 10 includes a plurality ofsensors 60 disposed or embedded in the screen. Sensors may also bepositioned around the display 10. Sensors 60 may be touch type sensorswhich detect user interest in an item displayed on the screen when auser touches a region near the sensor. Sensors 60 may also be motiontype sensors which detect the presence of users near the region on thescreen where the users may be standing or pointing. Sensors 60 may alsobe optical sensors or a camera which detects the presence of users nearthe board. In this case, when the sensors detect a user, an image of thedetected user is sent to processor 20 which then compares the image withstored images of users in the workgroup or community to which theelectronic board system belongs.

[0023] Processor 20 determines which items to display on screen 10 andalso receives the sensor input pertaining to user interest (if sensors60 are present on or around screen 10). Processor 20 selects items todisplay from memory 30. Users 50 in the workgroup or community inputitems of interest for display on screen 10 through input device 40.Input device 40 may be any suitable input device. Input device 40 may bea scanner, copier, multi-function device 44, personal digital assistant(PDA) 42, workstation 46 or email 48. If a multi-function device (MFD)is used as an input device, the MFD can acts as both an input mechanism,allowing users to scan new documents for the electronic board system 100and also as an output mechanism for providing users with hardcopies ofitems that other user's have posted on the electronic board system. Ifdisplay 10 is configured as an input device, users may inputinformation, for example, by writing comments on the display (which arestored and converted to text by an appropriate character recognitionsoftware). Users may also input information by touching or selecting aparticular area of the display 10.

[0024] There are a number of PDAs (and laptop computers) on the marketwhich are equipped with infrared communication links, and several brandssuch as the Palm Computing PDAs and the PSION PDAs have achieved a highlevel of market penetration. If PDA 42 (or some other type of mobiledevice such as a cell phone or laptop computer) is used as an inputdevice, instead of relying on an interface on the large screen display,users of PDAs equipped with infrared communications could capturecomments from the screen 10 to take with them and also leave comments onitems displayed on the screen.

[0025] Electronic board system 100 may be optionally connected to anetwork 150. Networked systems provide several possibilities forsupporting awareness of remote sites either by synchronizing alldisplays so that they show the same information or by allowingindividual electronic board systems 100 to allocate some portion oftheir display 10 area either to specific systems or to a more generalorganizational view. Remote users can also access a simulation of thedisplay 10 via a web-based interface and so get their own picture ofwhat is happening in the work community.

[0026] While the electronic board system may be of particular benefit ina workgroup, the system may be beneficially used by other types ofcommunities. For example, a student dormitory in a university may have agroup of electronic boards located on different floors and in commonareas. While the boards may be networked together, each board may have adifferent set of rules for displaying items of interest. For example, aboard in a common area may list ride information. A board on a floor forfemale students may list items of more interest to women.

[0027] The electronic board system may also be used in a shopping mallor department store. For example, a board system in a shopping mall mayhave multiple displays, located near different types of stores, eachdisplaying multimedia information pertinent to the stores in itsvicinity and adaptive to shoppers in the area at the time.Alternatively, shoppers may register profiles (such as for previousshopping histories), which can also be used to display information whena registered shopper is identified by a particular board. A music store,for example, may also include input from on-line communities andcommunity websites for recommendations (e.g., a top 40 list) andsubmissions. The music store board system might determine what items todisplay based on sales charts, currently popular purchases, category ofcurrent shopper, and so on. The electronic board system may also be usedfor leisure activities, such as at an airport with a fixed basedoperator (FBO). The FBO board might display airplanes for rent, recentstudent solos and favorite cross country locations.

[0028] The electronic board system 100 can be viewed from a systemarchitecture point of view as having a number of components, includinginput and output hardware, modules for processing the information,modules for selecting which pieces of information to display at anygiven moment and storage components as shown in FIG. 2.

[0029] The hardware devices include a large screen display 10(implemented by video projection or by a large LCD flat panel display)and a multi-function device (MFD) 44. (For convenience only a MFD typeof input device will be described; clearly many other types of inputdevices as mentioned above may be used. Also for convenience, operationof the system 100 will be described with respect to a workgroup;clearly, other types of communities may employ the electronic boardsystem.) The MFD appears to the users as a normal office photocopier.However, the MFD is in fact a digital, not analog, device that iscapable of scanning documents and storing them electronically andprinting electronic documents in addition to the capabilities of astandard photocopier.

[0030] Each hardware device has an associated software module executedby processor 20 that is responsible for handling device specificrequirements (such as user interaction, and layout and presentation).The central software component is a content selection module 22 whichselects which of the possible information items should be represented onthe screen 10 at any given moment and which handles the output ofrequested documents and the input of new documents via the MFD 44.Module 22 also receives information from external sources such aspush-media 70, video feeds and information submitted from desktop PCs46. Display manager 24 controls the actual output on screen 10. PaperU/I controller 26 takes input from MFD 44 and stores it in data storage30.

[0031] The storage agents 90 are modules that interface with variousexternal databases and information sources; these may include legacydatabases located locally and on the Internet in addition to informationdirectly maintained by the system 100. The storage agents 90 are capableof notifying the content selection module 22 when items are added to theinformation store thereby enabling the content selection module 22 todecide whether to update the display to reflect the new information.Content selection module 22 is also responsible for coordinating withother electronic board systems via links 80 to enable one display toshow items displayed on a board situated elsewhere in the organization.

[0032] The electronic board system 100 addresses the problem ofproviding background awareness by combining a large screen displaysituated in a natural meeting place with an input device that isextremely easy to use (the office photocopier, PDA, etc.). Theelectronic board system 100 can be easily used. For example, a user 50walks over to the photocopier 40 with a document that she wishes tocopy. While copying the document it occurs to the user that it might beof general interest and so by pressing a button on the photocopier(which is actually an MFD) she directs the copier to make an electroniccopy and store it. The systems 100 stores the electronic copy, employsan optical character recognition program to the document and classifiesit according to its contexts (domains of interest). In this example thedocument relates to one of the subject areas currently represented onthe screen 10. A representation of the document is immediately displayedon the large screen 10. In the office scenario, the screen 10 wouldlikely be located directly above the MFD/photocopier 40.

[0033] The user 50 glances up at the large screen display 10 and notessome general information such as a calendar for the group in whose areathe display 10 is situated, a reminder for a seminar that afternoon andanother document posted by a co-worker from his desktop workstation.Intrigued by the title and abstract (automatically produced by thecontent selection engine 22 using a summarization tool) of the document,the user 50 requests a copy and one is printed immediately for her bythe MFD 44. A second user approaches the screen 10. He has already notedan idea on his PDA 42 that he wishes to share with the other members ofhis workgroup but does not have the time to log onto his desktopworkstation and send an email. As he passes the screen 10 he points hisPDA 42 at it and uses the infrared communications facilities of his PDAto send the note to the system 100. At the same time his PDA downloadsnew comments from the system 100 which the user is then free to browseat his leisure.

[0034] The processor 20 controls display of items on the screen 10 inaccordance with a predetermined relationship. This relationship is basedon a group based recommendation criteria and user interest. The varioussoftware modules executed by the processor perform these functions. Thefunctionality of these modules will be described with reference to FIG.3. Content selection module 22 generally determines which informationhas priority on the screen 10 at a given time. Memory 30 stores an itempool 110, which is a collection of information about items which arecurrently being referenced by users. The system 100 keeps thisinformation up to date and makes it available to the rules (describedbelow) which can use this information to guide the selection of items todisplay. An item is “referenced” by a user, or a user indicates aninterest in an item in one of many different ways, for example, when auser uploads the item via the input device, when a user uploads acomment about an item, when a user requests a copy of the item, when auser reads the item by standing near the screen 10 (which is detected bysensors 60).

[0035] Various rules are used to select the items to be displayed and togovern the manner in which items are being displayed. While eachworkgroup or community may select its own set of rules, the rulesdescribed in this embodiment provide for a dynamic and reactive displayof items of most interest to the community or workgroup. Backstage rules114 determine the relevance of a specific item at a specific time. Thesystem 100 configuration specifies what rules are used and in whatcircumstances. The display manager 24 is responsible for the high-levelmanagement of the items displayed on screen 10. This component decideswhat is visible on the display and how information is displayed. Ithandles user-input events and triggers the appropriate service.Frontstage rules 116 determine the display characteristics of a specificitem at a specific time. The system 100 configuration specifies whatrules are used in what circumstances.

[0036] The display manager 24 breaks down the overall display intovarious topics 118. Each topic subroutine manages all visual data for agiven topic (item), i.e., the large screen high level components forspecific types of data (comment box, ratings etc). Depending on theimplementation, these could render direct to the screen or they couldbuild upon a standard user interface toolkit such as Swing. Topics maybe, for example, for sale items, a schedule of upcoming events, lists ofrestaurants by type, etc.

[0037] To expand the number of items of interest and topics available,the electronic board system may be connected to external memory via thestorage agents 90. Storage agents 90 provide access to one or moredatabases which may contain a hierarchical set of contexts (domains ofinterest), with which items of information are associated. Contextsdefine communities of interest such as architecture, Italian cuisine,and ancient monuments. (Note that a topic subroutine 118 may beassociated with each context for the purposes of displaying items on thescreen 10.) Items represent individual entities such as a particularmuseum exhibit, a museum, a restaurant, and a cathedral. Items may beassociated with more than one context; for example, a restaurant mightserve Italian food (and therefore be associated with Italian cuisine)while at the same time also being of architectural interest (andtherefore being associated with the context(s) relevant toarchitecture).

[0038] Also present in the database are ratings, and comments made byusers on specific items. Ratings indicate whether people like or dislikeparticular items and correspond to values selected from a numeric scaleindicating like-dislike. Comments are either typed text or scannedhand-writing and can be anything that a person wishes to associate witha particular item. Ratings and comments are an indication of userinterest and are used by content selection 22 to select which items tobe displayed.

[0039] The electronic board system 100 selects the topics (or contexts)that are most representative of the community or workgroup at thecurrent time and displays information about these topics (items) in sucha way that onlookers can see which are the items of current interest tothe community. The community or workgroup is the group of users servedby the electronic board system. Depending on the configuration (i.e.,the predetermined relationship which processes the items and userinterest and the group-based recommendation criteria) this could be aparticular workgroup, people whose offices are in the vicinity of thescreen 10 or some other well-defined subset of the people in anorganization. Once selected, items displayed are grouped by contexts (ortopics) so that the display has some coherence. Items can berepresented, for example, by a title, a brief description, and commentson the items and pictures of the users who have commented on that item.Onlookers can therefore see what is interesting, who is interested in itand what these people are saying about the item.

[0040] In order to maximize screen usage while preserving context, oldercomments (and the associated images of the commenter) may be graduallyshrunk in display size and thereby progress from being full-size, tobeing small but legible, to being illegible but still visible, tofinally vanishing altogether. This approach provides some indication ofthe volume of comments even if people cannot actually read them all.Optionally, ratings can be displayed alongside particular items to giveanother form of feedback.

[0041] An important part of the electronic board system is the selectionof appropriate material to display and the management of the limitedamount of screen real-estate relative to the large number of possibleinformation items that are amassed by a moderately sized workgroup orcommunity. Selection is determined in part by the recommendationcriteria used. The content selection module 22 incorporates arecommendation system that matches the interests of the user communitywith the available information and selects the most appropriateinformation to display at a given moment.

[0042] Unlike most recommendation systems which learn the preferences ofindividual users, the recommendation engine deals with the preferencesof a group of users and displays information that is likely to be ofgeneral interest or at least of interest to several members of a group.Implicit ratings (such as from user actions) and explicit ratings (suchas from user comments and ratings) may be used by the recommendationengine. The recommendation criteria may also use additional informationfrom a group calendar to decide who is likely to see the display on agiven day and thereby further refine the choice of information todisplay. For example, if it is known from the calendar that a givenperson will not be at work on a particular day then the preferences ofthat person can be ignored when selecting content for display.

[0043] Content selection module 22 uses a dynamically modifiable set ofrules to evaluate the items in the knowledge base and prioritize eachitem in terms of the likely interest to the target audience. These rulescan use the ratings from the recommender system, other attributes of theitem (such as the number of times it has be printed or commented on),and any current interaction or indication of user interest with thescreen. Each rule applies to one or more document types so that, forexample, notification of an upcoming event can be handled differentlyfrom a research paper. For example, the priority of an event might riseas the time for the event draws near and then drop to zero after theevent has occurred. Whereas the priority of a research paper may not betime related and may depend on the interests of the people present on agiven day and the feedback received on the paper. Based on the output ofthese rules the content selection module 22 produces a set ofrecommendations for display.

[0044] A feature of the electronic board system is that it allows for aflexible configuration of the display. This is accomplished by employinga second set of rules to customize the appearance and behavior of theitems selected on the screen. In the same way that the different contentselection rules are triggered according to different document types,different appearance rules are triggered according to different documenttypes.

[0045] The electronic board system database can contain many differentcontexts and members of a group will likely be members of many differentcontexts, probably with some degree of overlap. Given the large numberof possible topics represented by the different contexts, the system 100must find the topics that are likely to be of interest. One simplemethod would simply be to find items ranked as interesting by the ruleswithout reference to context but this might result in a display that istoo incoherent. To provide more coherence, contexts are pre-selectedaccording to which are deemed interesting and which give a preference toitems associated with them. However, by tuning the rules of the system,very interesting items which are associated with an otherwiseuninteresting context may be selected to be displayed.

[0046] The following relationship produces a ranked list of popularcontexts for a group of specified users. This relationship is anextension of that used in the Knowledge Pump system (see N. Glance, D.Arregui, M. Dardenne: “Knowledge Pump: Supporting the Flow and Use ofKnowledge in Networked Organizations”. in: U. Borghoff, R. Pareschi(eds.), Information Technology for Knowledge Management, SpringerVerlag, Berlin, 1998 and N. Glance, D. Arregui, M. Dardenne. “MakingRecommender Systems Work for Organizations”. In Proceedings of PAAM′99,1999). Two parameters define the notion of popular:the number of membersfrom a group and the degree of participation from the group members.Assume a group G of m members and a set of n contexts (for example,newsgroups, mailing lists, recommender contexts) where they have atleast subscribed during the last t time.

[0047] Activity of group members: For each user the number ofinteractions with the each context of which they are a member or towhich they have contributed are counted. Since producing information(inflow such as reviews, postings, etc.) indicates a higher level ofinterest and commitment, each input action gets a weight of W_(i) andeach output action (outflow such as reading, printing, etc.) gets aweight of W_(o). It is therefore possible to construct for each user amatrix contexts x documents, where each entry dr_(ij) is 1 if the userintroduced the document j in the community i, 0 otherwise. On the baseof the values in this matrix it is possible to associate to the user ithe following vector representing the overall activity across thecontexts, where 0 [j<n, n=total number of contexts and where 0 [l<m,m=total number of document submitted to the system $\begin{matrix}{{{IF}_{i}^{j}}_{j = 0}^{n - 1} = {\sum\limits_{l = 0}^{m - 1}{dr}_{jl}}} & {{{Eq}.\quad 1}:{{User}\quad {inflow}}}\end{matrix}$

[0048] In the same way it is possible to construct for each user amatrix of contexts x documents visited, where each entry dv_(ij) is 1 ifthe user followed the document j in the context of the community i, 0otherwise. On the base of the values in this matrix, it is possible toassociate to the user i the following vector representing his or heroverall activity across the contexts, where 0 [j<n, n=total number ofcontexts and where 0 [I<m, m=total number of document submitted in thesystem $\begin{matrix}{{{OF}_{i}^{j}} = {\sum\limits_{l = 0}^{m - 1}{dv}_{jl}}} & {{{Eq}.\quad 2}:{{User}\quad {outflow}}}\end{matrix}$

[0049] Given the above vectors it is possible to construct a vectorrepresenting the overall activity (inflow+outflow) of a user.$\begin{matrix}{{A_{i}^{j}}_{j = 0}^{n - 1} = {{{OF}_{i_{j = 0}\quad}^{j^{n - 1}}} + {{IF}_{i}^{j}}_{j = 0}^{n - 1}}} & {{{Eq}.\quad 3}:{{User}\quad {global}\quad {activity}}}\end{matrix}$

[0050] The resulting sums are then normalized to give a score betweenzero and one for each user in each of their contexts.

[0051] One issue to take into account here is normalization with respectto the number of members of the group who are members of a context. Forexample very few people will be surprised by items from a context ofwhich most of the group members are members because they will likelyhave already seen this information via other interfaces or havediscussed it with other group members. On the other hand, items in suchcontexts could be deemed to be of high priority. In the system 100 usersmay be allowed to choose which they prefer by allowing them to configurethe system to use the context selection rules that best suit theirneeds. Since the rules can be dynamically loaded, users can fine-tunethe behavior of the system as their become experienced with it or ascontext membership evolves.

[0052] Most popular contexts selection: Contexts are selected by takingthe M×N matrix of contexts x users. For each context j and each user ithe matrix entry is the value A_(i) ^(j) as described above. Then theoverall community activity for the group G and the community j is givenby $\begin{matrix}{{CG}_{j} = {\sum\limits_{i = 1}^{N}A_{i}^{j}}} & {{{Eq}.\quad 4}:{{group}\quad {activity}\quad {in}\quad {the}\quad {community}\quad j}}\end{matrix}$

[0053] It is then possible to sort the list of CG_(j) results to obtainthe current set of interesting contexts for the group members.

[0054] Each value is then normalized to provide a number between 0 and1, which is used as weight when applying a random choice among thecontexts to display. In this way the contexts where most of the groupmembers are interested and active will be more likely displayed. On theother side there will not be a strong degree of surprise coming fromthem for most of the people, therefore the choice to leave a possibilityeven if smaller for the contexts with minor participation.

[0055] Selection of most relevant documents in each context:For eachcontext, the system computes a list of ranked documents, on the base ofhow much the group as a whole tends to agree with the other members ofthe context. First a Pearson r is computed to measure the correlationbetween the people associated with a context and the group average,thereby allowing the system to produce recommendations for the group inthe same way as for individuals. The correlation formula is presented inEq. 5 and shows how to produce a correlation between the group and inindividual, Y. Gi represents the average rating of group members of itemi. G-bar represents the average of the group's ratings. The algorithmprovides values ranging from −1 (G and Y tend not to agree at all on theitems they both rated), 0 (G and Y rating are not correlated) and 1 (Gand Y tend to agree perfectly). It has to be noticed that the only itemstaken into account for these computations are only the ones at least amember of G and Y both rated. $\begin{matrix}{{r_{GY} = \frac{{Cov}\left( {G,Y} \right)}{\sigma_{G}\sigma_{Y}}},{r_{GY} = \frac{\sum\limits_{i}{\left( {G_{i} - \overset{\_}{G}} \right)\left( {Y_{i} - \overset{\_}{Y}} \right)}}{\sqrt{\sum\limits_{i}\left( {G_{i} - {\overset{\_}{G}}^{- 2}} \right)}\quad \sqrt{\sum\limits_{i}\left( {Y_{i} - {\overset{\_}{Y}}^{- 2}} \right)}}}} & {{{Eq}.\quad 5}:{{Historical}\quad {agreement}\quad {correlation}}}\end{matrix}$

[0056] For each document is possible to compute its rating using thecorrelation among all the people ranking it and the group as a whole.Then the overall rating of a document is given by the weighted sum ofthe ratings given to it.

[0057] This is one possible scenario, using the rules mechanism belowthe selection of contexts described above could be combined with adifferent, possibly extended mechanism for selecting individual items,or vice-versa. For example the system could employ two rules: one usingthe item selection method described above and the other preferring newitems by combining the output of these rules we would get a compositerule that recommended items to the group that should not only beinteresting but are also recent.

[0058] It is possible to compose rules to allow complex rules to bedefined as combinations of simple rules. The rules to be used arespecified in a system configuration file to allow the set of rules to beused to be easily changed and to vary between instances of theelectronic board system. Also different rules may be specificallyallowed to be applied to different document types. For example, adifferent criteria could be used to decide whether a time-dependentevent is more interesting at a given moment than a technical reportwhich is a more static entity. In order to reach a balance betweenimplementation simplicity and expressive power in our prototype theactual rules themselves may be written as Java classes that conform toan interface specification. The rule classes are dynamically loaded atrun-time allowing the system to be extended with new rules and allowingdifferent instances of the system to use different rule-sets. However,another option would be to use a declarative language or an expertsystem shell to provide a more powerful high-level alternative towriting rules in Java.

[0059] In one embodiment the system employs three types of rules:backstage rules 114 of which there are two subtypes, control thepriority of information items and item contexts and are used to findwhich items and contexts are currently “interesting”. Frontstage rules116 are used to control the rendering of items on the large screendisplay. One type of backstage rule allows contexts to be prioritized(for example using the relationship described above) and the second typeallows individual items to be prioritized. Backstage rules may bespecified in a configuration file according to the following grammar.<BACKSTAGERULES> : BACKSTAGE {<RULES>} <RULES> : <RULE> | <RULE><RULES><RULE> : <ITEMRULE> | <CONTEXTRULE> | AT <TIMEDATE><ITEMRULE> | AT<TIMEDATE><CONTEXTRULE> | EVERY <TIMEINTERVAL><ITEMRULE> | EVERY<TIMEINTERVAL> <CONTEXTRULE> <ITEMRULE> : RULE <DOCTYPE><RULEBODY><CONTEXTRULE> : CONTEXTRULE <DOCTYPE><RULEBODY> <RULEBODY> : <RULENAME>() | <RULENAME> (<PARAMLIST>:<RULELIST>) <RULELIST> : <RULE><RULE>,<RULELIST> <PARAMLIST> : <PARAMETER> | <PARAMETER>,<PARAMLIST><PARAMETER> : ATTRNAME = “VALUE” <RULENAME> : [A-Za-z0-9_]* <ATTRNAME> :[A-Za-z0-9_]* <DOCTYPE> : The name of a document type (defined at thebeginning of the configuration file) that this rule applies to.<TIMEDATE> : HH:mm # at a given time each day | dd HH:mm # at a giventime on the specified day of each month | MM-dd HH:mm:ss # at a giventime each year at the date specified | yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss # on onespecific year at the date and time specified <TIMEINTERVAL> : HH:mm:ss #every HH hours and mm minutes and ss seconds In this way rules can bespecified as taking the output of other rules as parameters. The rulesare implemented as Java classes so only the rule name and parametersneed be specified in the configuration file. An example of a rulespecification is: BACKSTAGE { RULE Event EventRule(BoostPriority=“yes”)RULE Document Average(: CommentRule( ), RatingRule( )) CONTEXTRULERestaurants RestaurantRule( ) AT 12:00 RULE * ContextPriorityRule( ) AT19:00 RULE * ContextPriorityRule( ) EVERY 2:00:00 RULE * Average(:CommentRule( ), RatingRule( )) }

[0060] Here three item types are handled. EventRule is selected to dealwith events and loads class “EventRule.class”. This rule alsodemonstrates a rule which takes a parameter. For items of type documentthe rule Average (loads class “Average.class”) is selected and this inturn loads two sub-rules CommentRule and RatingRule. Also a thirddocument type Restaurants is used to select contexts which representrestaurants. This shows the use of the CONTEXTRULE keyword which allowsthe relevance of contexts to be calculated. In this example,RestaurantRule gives priority to all contexts which representrestaurants and this information is used by ContextPriorityRule toupdate the priority of items by context at times when people might bethinking about visiting a restaurant. Finally, every two hours theAverage rule is used to reset priorities back to “normal”.

[0061] Implementation of the frontstage rules may be accomplishedrelatively simply. In this case the configuration file simply associatesa single rule with a document type. Each frontstage rule containsmethods that are triggered when a certain event occurs such as an itementering or leaving the display.

[0062] The electronic board system is not simply an output onlymechanism; users can also interact with the display to obtain moreinformation and to recommend new documents. Various types of input andoutput mechanisms may be employed:

[0063] Paper:A user can use paper based forms (such as through a PaperU/I program as FlowPort®) to input new documents into the system or tocomment or rate a document displayed on the screen 10. To add a newdocument the user takes a FlowPort cover sheet, for example, adds somebasic information , places it on top of the document and uses the MFD toscan the pages. The system then uses OCR to convert the input documentto text and by performing keyword extraction, automatically classifiesit into one or more contexts. Users can comment on documents or requestprint outs of documents by using other forms, indicating the document'sreference number (displayed on the screen) and then scanning the form.

[0064] Mouse: A wireless mouse can be used to control the mouse pointerof the processor running the system software modules. This allows usersto select displayed items on the E-board and use a pop-up menu to ratethe item or request that it be printed.

[0065] Touch screen:Manufacturers such as SMART technologies producedisplay hardware that incorporates a touch sensitive screen over thedisplay surface. Using such a device would allow users to directly touchitems of interest and then use either gestures or pop-up menus tointeract with the display. For example, users could rate an item,request that it be printed, or request that the system show more detailabout a particular item.

[0066] PDA:Most personal digital assistants are equipped with aninfrared port. This would allow the PDA to become personal userinterface to the electronic board system. A user could write a commenton a document or the URL of a document at any time and while passing thesystem use the infrared link to “beam” the information to the system.Another option would be to add direct real-time input so that, whenstanding in front of the system, the user could control various aspectsof the system's display.

[0067] Video input:One advantage of having an electronic display such asthe electronic board system is that it can present a dynamic displaywhich is both time-varying and dependent on the current set of users.Using a video camera and image recognition software the system may reactautomatically and in real-time to the presence of people in front of thedisplay. The system may be configured to recognize that someone isstanding in front of the display and perhaps count the number of people.This might cause it to stop cycling some elements of the display inorder to give users a chance to read them. A higher level ofsophistication would be for the system to be able to recognize wherepeople are looking and to devote more screen space to the items whichappear to be attracting their attention. The system may also recognizeindividual people and tailor the display to their preferences (asdefined in pre-stored user preference files stored in system memory).

[0068] Email:Users may input items of interest or comment on displayeditems by sending an email to the electronic board system.

[0069] Although the electronic board system provides a large screendisplay for the workplace, it is also possible to run a simulation on adesktop computer. This simulation can be implemented in Java™ anddelivered via the Internet to user's workstations or personal computersthereby enabling people working from home or remotely at anotherlocation to maintain an awareness of the activities of their colleaguesat the office. Home workers can also participate in the display byposting information to the main screen either via email or the Internet.

[0070] The invention has been described with reference to a particularembodiment. Modifications and alterations will occur to others uponreading and understanding this specification taken together with thedrawings. The embodiments are but examples, and various alternatives,modifications, variations or improvements may be made by those skilledin the art from this teaching which are intended to be encompassed bythe following claims.

What is claimed is:
 1. An electronic board system, comprising: anelectronic board including a screen for displaying information;apparatus for determining user interest in information displayed on thescreen; an input device for receiving information to be displayed on theelectronic board from a plurality of users; a memory for storinginformation received from the input device; a processor for selectingwhich information to display on the screen, for determining where andhow to display the selected information on the screen and for displayingthe selected information on the screen; wherein the processor selectswhich information to display in accordance with a predeterminedrelationship based on group-based recommendation criteria and userinterest.
 2. The electronic board system of claim 1, wherein the inputdevice comprises a multi-function device for printing, scanning andcopying.
 3. The electronic board system of claim 1, wherein the inputdevice comprises a mobile computing device.
 4. The electronic boardsystem of claim 3, wherein the mobile computing device is selected fromthe group consisting of personal digital assistant, portable computerand cell phone.
 5. The electronic board system of claim 1, furthercomprising a plurality of personal computers and workstations connectedto a network.
 6. The electronic board system of claim 5, wherein,responsive to a user request, information displayed on the screen istransmitted to the user's personal computer or workstation and displayedthereon.
 7. The electronic board system of claim 5, wherein the networkcomprises the Internet.
 8. The electronic board system of claim 5,wherein the network comprises an intranet.
 9. The electronic boardsystem of claim 1, wherein the input device comprises a touch screenembedded in the electronic board.
 10. The electronic board system ofclaim 1, wherein the input device, responsive to a user request forinformation in the memory, outputs a copy of the requested information.11. The electronic board system of claim 1, wherein the input devicecomprises an electronic information system having a paper userinterface.
 12. The electronic board system of claim 1, furthercomprising a device for receiving email submissions and requests forinformation from users.
 13. The electronic board system of claim 1,further comprising an external service for providing information andwherein the processor selects information to be displayed from theexternal service in accordance with the group-based recommendationcriteria.
 14. The electronic board system of claim 13, wherein theexternal service comprises video information.
 15. The electronic boardsystem of claim 13, wherein the external service comprises audioinformation
 16. The electronic board system of claim 1, wherein,responsive to user input to the input device, the processor stores arating for the user input information in the memory, stores arepresentation of the user input information in the memory and analyzesthe content of the user input information.
 17. The electronic boardsystem of claim 1, wherein the predetermined relationship is a functionof information topics most representative to the plurality of users atthe current time.
 18. The electronic board system of claim 17, whereininformation is displayed about the most representative topics in amanner which enables onlookers to view which information is of currentinterest to the plurality of users.
 19. The electronic board system ofclaim 1, wherein the recommendation criteria is a function ofpreferences of the plurality of users and wherein the predeterminedrelationship is a based on criteria that is likely to be of generalinterest to the plurality of users or of interest to several of theplurality of users.
 20. The electronic board system of claim 1, furthercomprising a group calendar comprising a calendar of schedules of theplurality of users and wherein the predetermined relationship is furthera function of the group calendar.
 21. The electronic board system ofclaim 1, wherein the information stored in the memory comprises aplurality of topics and wherein the processor ranks the informationstored in the memory according to topic and according to activity of theplurality of users.
 22. The electronic board system of claim 21, whereinuser activity comprises the number of times individual users have inputthe item and the number of times individual users have output the item.23. The electronic board system of claim 21, wherein each topic isranked in accordance with the number of higher rated individual items insuch topic.
 24. The electronic board system of claim 23, wherein thepredetermined relationship comprises a rule for determining which itemsof information are to be displayed on the screen based on higher rankedtopics.
 25. The electronic board system of claim 21, wherein thepredetermined relationship comprises a rule for determining which itemsare to be displayed on the screen based on higher individual rankings.26. The electronic board system of claim 1, wherein the size andlocation of items displayed on the screen is a function of timedisplayed and user interest.
 27. The electronic board system of claim 1,wherein the apparatus for determining user interest comprises aplurality of sensors disposed behind the screen, wherein each sensordetects user interest in information displayed on the screen near thesensor.
 28. The electronic board system of claim 1, wherein theapparatus for determining user interest comprises the processor storingrequests for copies of displayed items.
 29. The electronic board systemof claim 27, wherein the predetermined relationship comprises a rule fordetermining which items are to be displayed on the screen based on userratings, item attributes and sensor input.
 30. The electronic boardsystem of claim 27, wherein the sensors detect information written onthe screen or pointed to by persons near the screen.
 31. The electronicboard system of claim 1 further comprising a camera for detectingpresence of a person near the screen and identifying the person.